I would've gone back and edited it, but I figured that your post was DIRECTLY ABOVE mine, and that people here generally aren't stupid, so whatever.
Back to the topic, I think that anyone who thinks that Valve are trying to "discriminate" against European customers IS in fact, stupid.

Since two other people quoted your misquote right afterwards, I'd say that may have been assuming too much. No offense intended to the two people in question, but once a misquote is removed from the original post, perhaps as far as the next page, it becomes the latest "de facto" truth.

I't not the same thing. Price in $ with VAT is lower then new price in €.
And some countries dont have VAT for goods from digital distribution - they are screwed even more.

Yeah, but can you point out a faster way to get your game shipped on your system? At least here in Romania, things are moving REAL slow...

Go to a store and buy it almost two times cheaper than on Steam...?

I don't need it cheaper, just faster. I review games so I need them ASAP.

I don't know your situation, but for me going to the store takes about 3 minutes, another 2 to make a purchase, and the 3 minutes on my way back. That a total of eight minutes to buy a game. Sorry, but internet lines capable of delivering a standard game (around 4GB) electronically to my computer in that time are not even commercially available in Poland (not sure about Romania though). And that's all beside the fact, that I really don't like the feeling of being stolen from.

I tend to try and get gameplay videos uploaded as soon as I can. Speed is a factor for me too, but the DRM issues of late are a concern just the same.

Well, apart from very popular titles, I have to buy and get games shipped from the Capital. And they take somewhere about 3 days to arrive. While my internet bandwidth is not outrageous, I can still download games in half a day to one day to a most. Additionally, games are launched late in my country. Take Prince of Persia for example, it was launched at European level on 10 of December I think, and only yesterday by Ubisoft Romania. Things move slower here.

lol what a ****up! never liked steam too much anyway, some of the prices are double than retail which is immoral and unethical, you get the box, manual and some goodies in retail plus the shipping cost packaging, manual printing etc. how the **** can digital distribution cost more plus in this day and age when you can get digital games on torrents which costs nothing, wow imagine that this means that kids that run torrent sites have a more efficient system than steam which hold all the games on a server and sometimes they don't even go full speed, piracy will rise in Europe after this.

Not only is it illegal by EU laws to price the games cheaper for UK costumers than the rest of Europe, VAT is not a flat tax for all of Europe. Here in Norway we do not pay any VAT on digital downloads whatsoever and therefore it is illegal to charge us with VAT. Where does all this tax go? I surely hope not into Valve's and the publishers' pockets.
Valve must equalize the prices for all countries in the European Union and adjust VAT to local levels for each country, including removing it completely where applicable. All of Europe must have access to the same selection of games from their webstore. Many people have asked the European Commission to look into the matter, and that is no laughing matter for Valve. The European Commission has the power to fine companies up to 10% of their annual worldwide turnover for breaching EU antitrust laws. Apple chose to equalize pricing across its European iTunes stores when the EC filed a case against them for differential pricing. In my opinion, Valve has in this case breached EU antitrust rules in a degree far worse than what Apple did. This could lead to a very nasty situation for Valve.

First time I heard of VAT I never paid that before this mess, when I bought The Witcher on steam recently the only thing deducted from my account was 49.99 and not a penny more I never paid for VAT whatever that is.

Ahh the dreaded Value Added Tax. That strange, mostly European tax that is loosely translated as the "You need to spend more money" tax. I never understood what it does since there is no real added value on the product that has the VAT attached to its price.

Fascinating indeed lol so what changed over night that I need to 'spend more' suddenly I don't know, greedy valve president or someone else doesn't matter if they don't change it no more steam.

There is actually a group all about this issue.